Antoine Schneck is a French photographer born in 1963, who lives in Paris.

In 2007, Antoine went to Burkina Faso to stay in a small village. He came back with more than 300 portraits. He then went on to do series in China and India, followed by Mali. Sitting on a chair in a white fabric tent, the subject stands out against a black background whilst Antoine Schneck, invisible, operates from the outside, a hole in the fabric with space for his camera lens. Detached from their bodies, without any accessories, these faces have the brute, expressive strength of a mask with a human dimension.

«I was twelve when I found in a closet a camera Kodak Retinette. My parents made family photos with an Instamatic. I bought "Photography in 10 lessons" and rushed to black and white. Among the names of Cartier-Bresson, William Klein and Marie-Laure de Decker, the name of Marc Riboud became more familiar to me. I was a friend of his children, and he proposed me help him sort his slides on his return from China. I was seventeen and over the next ten years I was away from my childhood dream - photography - to try different things. I studied architecture and learned to dominate space, and at Louis Lumière school y learned lighting. Then television cameraman, winner of the Carat Foundation, traveled the world studying work organization in broadcasting. At thirty I decided to leave everything and embrace photography again.»

«My portrait photos are creations. I spend time in the selected countries, but also on my return to Paris.

On the spot, I sit and I ride my studio. I create a kind of event. A situation that is conducive to discussion and meeting photo. Then I moved my subject and I go shoot outside to capture the innocence personality of my subject. I want my picture to read that face.»

«To understand it [the personality of subjects], I chose to erase me as a photographer. That is my subject enters my ephemeral studio, and I’m outside. Consequence: the person is no longer in a reaction to the photographer. She is in her bubble. What it offers is not tarnished by events or outside eyes. There is a form of fullness that I try to capture.»

«The use of black background eludes the person photographed supports such as decoration, the expressions, the relationship with the world and even the relationship with the photographer. By reading the face that offer not its history, but its immanence, I'm looking for a revelation. Denying light as writing, my work has banished all cargo, any parasitic reflection to present the face in her nakedness and interiority.»

«I go at least 3 weeks to have time. But conditions are often difficult, the heat, the fact that we put a point to get some sleep anywhere and not at the hotel … so I do not drag me either. Sometimes, as my next trip to Papua, it is the economic conditions that force me not to stay too long.

Then, a lot of my work is done on my return. I work at least two days each photo on photoshop. I remove the “temporary defects” that make given the size and the quality of my photos, you would not see it. I add a bit of light and eliminates what would interfere with the look. I finally get to what I call a work.»

«I did not choose Africa; was Africa who chose me, in the sense that it was the result of an encounter. I met a friend, Thomas Ladonne, who asked me to accompany him to Africa, and introduce the shaman of a town east of Burkina Faso. I accompanied him and that was the beginning of my African adventure. Everything has been a history of encounters.»

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